Senior citizens are the people we worry about. They're the ones on fixed incomes, the ones who get special bus fares and discounts because of their limited means.

Yet something strange has happened in recent years. Seniors are now the most financially comfortable people in the United States, with the steadiest cash flow and the lowest poverty rates. Meanwhile, child poverty is deepening and adults under 65 are the poorest they've been in about 50 years.

I mention this not to pick on seniors, who are rarely rich and who often rely on Social Security to stay afloat. I only want to underscore the poverty of everyone else, which has crept up so insidiously that our imaginations -- and public policies -- have yet to catch up.

Of the 46 million Americans living in poverty today, fewer than 8 percent are seniors, according to federal Census data. The trends over the past several decades are striking: Nearly every year, seniors get a little richer and other adults get a little poorer.

Even during the past several years of economic strife, poverty rates for seniors marched downward while everyone else's crept up. Today, only 8.7 percent of all seniors are poor, down from 25 percent in the late 1960s. The poverty rate for Hispanic and African American seniors has steadily declined to 18 percent.

By contrast, more than one-fifth of children live below the federal poverty line. For African American children, the poverty rate approaches 40 percent.

It's a striking divide. Children are poorer, their parents are poorer, and the only people who can afford Disneyland these days are too old for the rides.

I don't intend to incite resentment against Grandma by describing this wealth gap. I don't think we should gut Social Security, the most significant and successful anti-poverty program in U.S. history. And I certainly think we should honor our moral obligations to elderly people, particularly those in poor health: If we didn't, our spiritual poverty would far exceed our money problems.

But we do need to wrap our collective mind around the shifting demographics of poverty.

And we need to acknowledge our lopsided commitments to the generations. For example, the federal government spends per capita only $1 on children for every $7 spent on seniors, yet when Congress must cut the budget, only seniors get special consideration.

Many seniors are still on fixed incomes -- but fixed incomes are better than the variable, part-time incomes common in today's workforce. Seniors do struggle with bills -- but at least Medicare provides regular medical coverage and Social Security doesn't run out like unemployment benefits. Seniors do benefit from discounted bus fares and government assistance -- but they do so in a society where many adults can't afford college and can barely cover this month's rent.

It's not that seniors are living large, exactly. It's that their grandchildren and adult children are living small.

Child poverty is gaining some attention as more children show up to school hungry. Education is in the spotlight, too, as the consequences of shortchanging public schools become impossible to ignore.

But we won't become a more educated and prosperous country simply by treating the symptoms of child poverty -- or by pretending that the middle class is just fine. And we can no longer assume that seniors are the most vulnerable adults in society: In fact, seniors' collective quality of life is at historic highs.

Instead, we need to zero in on the record number of adults in the prime of their lives who are barely getting by -- and who need more skills training and better-paying jobs to support their children and prepare for retirement.

And we need to recognize, as we once did with the elderly, that poverty rarely fixes itself.